Jace Read online

  She threw a flirtatious smile over her shoulder. “Promises, promises.”

  Her hips swayed as she took her time strolling from the kitchen toward the front. He followed close behind, in case she decided to bolt after all. He was pissed—full-on angry at this girl and her attitude and the fact that she had broken into the safehouse with zero obvious remorse or concern—but damn, that walk was doing things to his cock.

  The moonlight kissed her pale skin as she stepped across the great room, no big hurry, and when she bent over to pick up her clothes—holy fuck. He knew she was putting herself on display on purpose, trying to manipulate her way out of this with promises of sex… but the wolf inside him was stirring, and that made Jace’s heart pound with fear more than lust.

  This girl was dangerous to him—in a way human girls never were. Which was precisely why his preferred mode of sexual release was a quick hookup with a human female in a smoke-filled bar in the city. Or more often, his own hand and a hot fantasy about claiming a mate… something that would never happen in reality. But he never tangled with female shifters, even if they were just looking for fun and not actually shopping for a mate. He couldn’t take the chance. But he also couldn’t look away from the show this shifter girl was putting on—every movement was a sensuous tease. She made slipping on jeans hotter than ripping them off. Which was exactly what his cock was twitching for, in spite of the rock-solid knowledge that it wasn’t going to happen.

  However, he was definitely going to fantasize about this later.

  When she was finally dressed, her smile shone in the moonlight. “You better wipe up the drool, River boy.”

  He ignored that—it was a show she obviously wanted him to watch, and he needed her to know it wasn’t going to work. Plus he needed to cool this whole thing down, including his raging hard-on, and find out exactly what she was doing here.

  Jace strode across the great room until he was face to face with her. “Are you going to tell me who you are now? Or do I have to haul out the torture sticks?”

  She frowned at his cold look, then matched it with a defiant one of her own. “Are you going to tell me why you didn’t shift?”

  He mouth dropped open, just for a second, then he snapped it shut and scowled. “Let me be clear about this: you’re going to explain why you’re breaking into my house, and you’re going to do it right now.”

  She leaned back and threw a pitying look in his direction. “Oh… I see… you can’t.”

  He couldn’t help the growl that escaped. “I can shift. I choose not to.” Dammit, how did she get under his skin so fast? He sucked in a breath and tried to regain his calm. “Are you going to answer my question, or do I have to bring in my pack to persuade you?”

  She glanced at the front door, but lucky for her, she decided not to make a run for it.

  She turned back to study him, folding her arms across her chest and cocking her head to the side. “Why didn’t you just shift to catch me?”

  “That’s really none of your business.” He was glad to hear his voice returning to its normal cool. “And you’ve got three seconds to come clean.”

  “That offer of naked interrogation is still on the table.” She smirked at him again.

  “Two.”

  The smirk faded, and her voice dropped. “Look, I don’t need any trouble—”

  “One.” He glanced up the stairs where the River pack was still slumbering away. One howl would bring them down.

  The girl threw up her hands. “Okay, all right.”

  He waited.

  She pursed her lips and hesitated. Then she said, “My name is Piper Wilding.”

  Jace narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t recognize her. Then again, he’d only met a few of the Wilding pack members personally. They were a different breed—still fiercely loyal like a pack should be, but looser in their organization. Whereas Jace and his brothers and their pack all worked for the River brothers’ security company, Riverwise, the Wilding’s were literally all over the map. Research professors, military, lawyers… they each went their separate way, not just in Seattle, but all over the world. And they had a reputation for being… unstable. He’d personally encountered the Wilding brand of crazy—most recently when Terra Wilding tried to crawl into his bed upstairs after Jaxson turned her down. She was an artist who normally lived downtown, but she had been hiding out at the safehouse after they’d rescued her baby sister Cassie.

  Terra was a black-haired tornado.

  Not unlike the girl standing before him.

  “A Wilding,” Jace finally said, nodding. “I should have known by the way you wrapped your legs around me before saying hello.”

  She bit her lip. “You’ll never know how great that could have been, River boy.”

  He hated the effect that had on his cock, which was finally starting to settle down.

  “I don’t think I’ll miss explaining the smell to my mother,” he said, keeping his voice ice cold. “And besides, that doesn’t really explain anything. We have a doorbell. You could have used it.” The Wildings might be hot-blooded, but they really weren’t completely insane. Some were even decent and reasonable, like Daniel Wilding, the Army grunt who helped out with their last mission. And who was also parked upstairs, waiting to help them track down Agent Smith and the other captured shifters.

  The smoldering sexiness dropped off Piper’s face. “I’m not really supposed to be here, River boy.”

  “No kidding.” He glared at her. “And my name is Jace.”

  “Jace.” She rolled his name around in her mouth in a way that had him thinking about tearing her clothes off again. Damn, he really had to get that under control. “Well, Jace River, The Wolf Who Chooses Not To Shift… I’m not supposed to be here, as in Seattle. But I need to see my brother, Daniel. And when I heard you had stashed him and my cousins up here…” She shrugged. “I needed to reach him without alerting the rest of the Wilding family network.”

  “Have you heard of a cell phone?” He looked askance at her. This story wasn’t holding up. “They’re a real handy invention. Reduces fatalities from breaking and entering a hundred fold.”

  She gave him a small smile that didn’t completely piss him off… because it was the first one that seemed like it might be real. “Can’t fool you, can I, Jace?” Then the smile dropped off. “Daniel and I… well, how can I put this?”

  “How about the truth?” he asked, coolly.

  “We don’t talk. Ever. I’m the blackest of sheep in a pack filled with nothing but black sheep. And Daniel’s one of the straighter arrows. And yet… I need his help.”

  “So a phone call wouldn’t cut it.” Strangely, he believed her. With so many wild cards in a single pack, no wonder they were scattered to the winds. He couldn’t imagine not speaking to his own brothers, but the River pack was different. Different meaning normal, not insane.

  Piper nodded, and her face opened up like she was amazed he understood. This softer expression stirred something inside him—something like sympathy for being the outsider in a pack of crazy wolves—but Jace shut that down fast. If there was one thing he’d already figured out about this one, it was that she was a master at manipulation.

  Piper ducked her head and said softly, “Daniel and I have a younger brother, Noah. He’s good people.” She looked up, eyes round and wide. “The best kind, in fact. And I’m not completely sure, but… I think something’s happened to him. He’s gone missing, and everything I’ve done to find him has come up zeroes. You have to believe me—coming here is my last resort.”

  That had the ring of truth, but Jace still raised his eyebrows. “Missing shifter? Sounds like you’re in the right place. Daniel hasn’t said anything about a missing brother, though.”

  She frowned. “Noah was stationed overseas. Army, like Daniel.”

  Which made sense. Jace nodded. “Sporadic contact. No reason why family stateside would know. At least, not right away.” He sucked in a breath. Missing military shifters? Overse
as? This thing just got bigger in a way he didn’t like. At all. “You could have just said that in the first place. If there’s an Army brother missing, we’re going to find him. Double that for a fellow shifter.”

  She smiled, and this one was definitely real. It stirred something inside him again, both man and wolf. Maybe she wasn’t all manipulation. Of course, that only made this hot shifter female even more dangerous to him. But none of that mattered.

  A missing brother-in-arms trumped everything.

  He tipped his head toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Two

  God, what a mess.

  All Piper had to do was sneak into a mountain estate and convince her brother to help her. Sneaking in was supposed to be the easy part. How many times had she infiltrated buildings, lifted documents, and planted surveillance? Come on, Piper. Granted, she wasn’t normally tackling a house full of shifters. And she should have anticipated at least one of them being a night wanderer. Not only had she been caught, but she’d been forced to spill a ton of intel to a man she didn’t even know.

  An extremely hot man, but still. Sloppy work.

  Piper winced internally as she quietly followed Jace River up the creaky wooden steps of his rambling estate. The man was hotness personified, climbing the stairs in nothing but pajama pants and bare feet. She’s already had the pleasure of being pressed up against his sublimely-muscled chest. It had been so long since she’d been that up-close-and-personal with a shifter… she’d forgotten how freaking gorgeous the men could be. And that kiss… sweet mercy that was hot. She’d meant to distract him for a moment so she could make her getaway, but then her wolf had insisted they stay and ride that big hunk of shifter for all he was worth.

  That was unexpected.

  Usually, her wolf had only a mild interest in the men that Piper enjoyed. And she’d enjoyed a lot. She figured a variety of male bed partners would make up for her vow to never take a mate—that somehow a large quantity of lovers might compensate for the lack of that one, mythical, magical shifter mate who was supposed to rock her world. It hadn’t quite worked out that way, so she shouldn’t be surprised that her wolf was all hot and heavy for the first shifter she’d kissed in years. And when Jace’s tall, broad-shouldered body had responded to her epic diversionary kiss—both she and her wolf became very aware that he wasn’t small in any dimension. Piper was certain any woman in his bed would be well satisfied. Her wolf probably thought this meant something. Like she was reconsidering the vow—which she definitely was not.

  But her wolf wouldn’t shut up about it, still panting and stomping her paws and craving this shifter’s fangs in her flesh, magically binding them forever. Even now, as Piper climbed the stairs, her wolf was drooling over the man’s sculpted V-shaped back, which tapered smoothly down to his pajama pants and ended in a tight rear end that moved like muscular seduction under those thin flannels. Her wolf was dead-sure that bedding this man would be a pleasure like she’d never known.

  Okay, Piper could see her wolf’s point about that.

  It was a good thing she had put on a show of trying to seduce him because her real arousal scent would have given her away. While all the talk of hot sex was just that—talk—a part of her couldn’t help wishing this Jace River hunk had been a little less… controlled.

  She kept her sigh of regret for lost chances inside as Jace led her down the hallway, ostensibly to her brother’s room. She had to prepare herself for this, now that the distraction of being caught by a ridiculously hot shifter had scrambled her focus.

  Finding Noah. That was all she needed in life. Make sure her kid brother—the good one, the only Wilding to ever give a damn about her—had not actually wandered off and gotten himself killed somewhere in Afghanistan. Once she knew he was safely running normal missions—as if being deployed was ever safe, but still—then she could go back to her life of traveling to exotic locales to track down the bad guys and bed down the good ones. And ignoring the world of shifters as much as possible. Then her wolf could go back to sleep and stop dreaming of mates she would never have.

  Jace tapped lightly at the door to Daniel’s room. Piper scented her brother’s woodsy-yet-charcoal-undertone natural smell through the rough-carved wood. The Army must have taught him to sleep light because it only took a moment before a shuffle inside the room preceded the door cracking open.

  Daniel’s hair was bed-tousled, but his eyes were sharp. They landed on Jace first. “Hey, man, what’s up?” But the last of his words faded as his gaze found Piper. He rolled his eyes, then briefly squeezed them shut, like the mere sight of her was causing him gastrointestinal pain.

  Nice to see you too, bro. She bit down on her lips to keep the retort inside. Be cool, get in, get what you need, get out. This had been her mantra all the way up the mountain. She just needed to execute on it now.

  Jace seemed on top of the interaction, but he just whispered, “We need to talk.”

  The house had already slept through her scuffle with Jace downstairs, but it would still be better to get behind closed doors before they started this conversation. In case it got a little heated.

  Daniel shook his head but stepped back, gesturing them both into his room. He didn’t bother with a light—the moon put a silvery glow on everything enough to see—he just closed the door behind them. The River pack had a pretty nice setup here. High-end rustic furniture. Real paintings on the wall. Thick tapestries as throw rugs. Someone had money, but they used it in understated ways.

  Daniel folded his arms and looked to Jace. “What’s she done now?”

  Jace’s eyes narrowed. “Couldn’t honestly tell you. But she’s got a message I think you might want to hear.”

  Piper lifted an eyebrow in Jace’s direction. So… the River brother wasn’t going to spill anything about their slap-slap-kiss downstairs. Interesting choice. She snuck a glance at Jace’s sleep pants—they were no longer sporting the erection that made her mouth water. He was probably trying to forget the whole thing as quickly as possible.

  Daniel turned to her. “Why are you here, Piper?”

  She opted to cut straight to it. “Noah is missing.”

  Daniel’s arms unlocked. “What do you mean, missing?”

  “Missing, as in not found. As in not where he’s supposed to be. Come on, Daniel, I know you went to college. They must have taught you something there.”

  He growled at her, and she had to keep her smile in check. And remember her purpose.

  “I just skyped with him a couple weeks ago, when I arrived stateside,” Daniel said, his tone solidly in the Piper is freaking for no reason position. “They probably just shut down the comms at the MWR. He said they had some kind of security breach and might not be able to communicate for a while.”

  Piper frowned. And Jace was giving her the side-eye like he thought she broke into his house and then lied about Noah going missing. But Noah hadn’t said anything about the MWR—Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Center—being closed when they last texted, five days ago.

  “I don’t contact him through the Rec Center, Daniel,” she said, trying to match his patronizing tone. “And I’m telling you, he’s gone radio silent.”

  Daniel folded his arms. “Oh, that’s right. You’re the spy girl now.”

  “Counterintelligence.” She glared at him, fully aware of how little he thought of her work, even though it was key to keeping grunts like him and Noah alive. It was like he thought she was CIA or NSA or something. A rival agency, not support. “But hey, thanks for playing and keeping up with the pieces on the board.”

  He snarled, but she just ignored that… because something gnawed at her about what he said. The skype setups at the MWR were how Noah normally phoned home, but Piper wasn’t “home” in Seattle any more than absolutely necessary—and when she was abroad, it was never anywhere she could openly skype with a U.S. Army grunt in some public internet cafe. That was the whole reason she had set up their back-channel comm system in the
first place—so she could keep tabs on her kid brother while he was off fighting the bad guys in the worst parts of the world. Their calls had started out weekly, but serving your country generally involved long stretches of extreme boredom punctuated by brief moments of sheer terror. Soon the check-ins were daily, and sometimes they text-chatted for over an hour. And he never missed a check-in unless he was in the middle of a firefight.

  If the MWR was actually down… she would have heard about it. If nothing else, Noah would have reported the moaning and complaining of his fellow grunts.

  “Wait… you’re counterintelligence?” Jace asked, bringing her out of her rabbit-hole of thought about that little mystery. He was surprised, but there was more respect in his voice than she ever got from Daniel. Or their father.

  She gave Jace a tight smile. “Defense Civilian Intelligence Specialist, working for the Army abroad,” she clarified quickly, remembering Jace said he was Army, too. Or she supposed ex-Army now with the River brothers’ security business. She did do a little research before she decided to break in. “Which means I’m boot dust to some.” Piper threw a glare at Daniel, then turned back to Jace, who was keeping a pretty good poker face about the whole thing. “Mostly I just do collective CI—the kind of counterintelligence that collects intel on the bad guy spies. I’m not in offensive operations.” Which meant she wasn’t out there actively engaging enemy agents to turn them or playing double agent and feeding them false intel. Of course, if she were, she certainly wouldn’t say so. And there were times when that line got pretty fuzzy.

  “I guess that explains why you didn’t use the doorbell.” Jace’s smirk said he was more amused than offended by that now. She supposed that was good. And that flirty smile of his was doing things to her nether parts that she really needed to ignore. Focus, Piper.